Ikigai : the Japanese secret to a long and happy life pdfdrive com

Walter Breuning (114)

“If you keep your mind and body busy, you’ll be around a long time.”

Born in Minnesota in 1896, Walter Breuning was able to see three centuries in his lifetime. He died in Montana in 2011, from natural causes; he’d had two wives and a fifty-year career on the railroad. At eighty-three he retired to an assisted living center in Montana, where he remained until his death. He is the secondoldest man (of verified age) ever born in the United States.
He gave many interviews in his final years, insisting that his longevity stemmed from, among other things, his habit of eating only two meals per day and working for as many years as he could. “Y our mind and your body. Y ou keep both busy,” he said on his 112th birthday, “you’ll be here a long time.” Back then, he was still exercising every day.
Among Breuning’s other secrets: He had a habit of helping others, and he wasn’t afraid of dying. As he declared in a 2010 interview with the Associated Press, “We’re all going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you’re born to die.”⁴
Before passing away in 2011, he is said to have told a pastor that he’d made a deal with God: If he wasn’t going to get better, it was time to go.

Alexander Imich (111)

“I just haven’t died yet.”

Born in Poland in 1903, Alexander Imich was a chemist and parapsychologist residing in the United States who, after the death of his predecessor in 2014, residing in the United States who, after the death of his predecessor in 2014, became the oldest man of authenticated age in the world. Imich himself died shortly thereafter, in June of that year, leaving behind a long life rich with experiences.
Imich attributed his longevity to, among other things, never drinking alcohol. “It’s not as though I’d won the Nobel Prize,” he said upon being declared the world’s oldest man. “I never thought I’d get to be so old.” When asked about his secret to living so long, his answer was “I don’t know. I just haven’t died yet.”⁵

Ikigai artists

The secret to long life, however, is not held by supercentenarians alone. There are many people of advanced age who, though they haven’t made it into Guinness World Records, offer us inspiration and ideas for bringing energy and meaning to our lives.
Artists, for example, who carry the torch of their ikigai instead of retiring, have this power.
Art, in all its forms, is an ikigai that can bring happiness and purpose to our days. Enjoying or creating beauty is free, and something all human beings have access to.
Hokusai, the Japanese artist who made woodblock prints in the ukiyo-e style and lived for 88 years, from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, added this postscript to the first edition of his One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji:⁶
All that I have produced before the age of 70 is not worth being counted. It is at the age of 73 that I have somewhat begun to understand the structure of true nature, of animals and grasses, and trees and birds, and fishes and insects; consequently at 80 years of age I shall have made still more progress; at 90 I hope to have penetrated into the mystery of things; at 100 years of age I should have reached decidedly a marvelous degree, and when I shall be 110, all that I do, every point and every line, shall be instinct with life.
In the pages that follow, we’ve collected some of the most inspirational words from artists interviewed by Camille Sweeney for the New York Times.⁷ Of those still living, none have retired, and all still enjoy their passion, which they plan to pursue until their final breath, demonstrating that when you have a clear purpose, no one can stop you.
The actor Christopher Plummer, still working at eighty-six, reveals a dark desire shared by many who love the profession: “We want to drop dead onstage.
That would be a nice theatrical way to go.”⁸
Osamu Tezuka, the father of modern Japanese manga, shared this feeling. Before he died in 1989, his last words as he drew one final cartoon were “Please, just let me work!”⁹
The eighty-six-year-old filmmaker Frederick Wiseman declared on a stroll through Paris that he likes to work, which is why he does it with such intensity. “Everybody complains about their aches and pains and all that, but my friends are either dead or are still working,” he said.¹⁰
Carmen Herrera, a painter who just entered her one hundredth year, sold her first canvas at age eighty-nine. Today her work is in the permanent collections of the Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art. When asked how she viewed her future, she responded, “I am always waiting to finish the next thing. Absurd, I know. I go day by day.”¹¹